Jose Reyes shines brightest at World Baseball Classic

Blue Jays' Jose Reyes shines brightest at World Baseball Classic

MIAMI — The great beached swindle of a stadium is mostly empty, maybe a quarter full, but it has been loud because the fans are from the Dominican Republic, and they care. But as the ball slices off Jose Reyes’ bat down the first-base line, the crowd sort of gasps, waiting for it to come down, and he waits, too. There is one out in the seventh, and Italy leads 4-2. The Dominicans need something. The ball keeps falling.

Too many Italian players converge on it at once, and the ball drops foul. Italy’s second baseman, Nick Punto, gets cut off, and will say later, “I had a dive at it. I don’t know if I would have gotten there, but I had a dive at it.” Reyes, the shortstop for the Toronto Blue Jays, has already homered in the third, a whip of a swing that sent the ball screaming into the giant yellow right-field pole sponsored by a local Indian tribe. Robinson Cano hit one too, but that’s it. Now Reyes is back at the plate in the stadium he briefly called home last season. Another chance.

The Dominican Republic is a great baseball nation, and Italy is a scrappy — they are legally required to be called scrappy — collection of guys with convenient ancestry and prominent vowels. The Dominicans should win this World Baseball Classic game, and they know that doesn’t mean much of anything.

They know this because the last time they tried, the Dominicans lost twice to the Netherlands and never escaped pool play in Puerto Rico. Here in North America the WBC is a half-breed, a curio, a blend of games that matter to some, but which are played under intractably flawed conditions. Not every great American player is here. Not everyone wants to be here. The Dominicans want to be here, especially after last time. Reyes scored the go-ahead run in the elimination game against the Netherlands in 2009, in the top of the 11th. He was so happy. Then they lost.

“Awful,” says Leo Lopez, the public relations man for the Dominicans, in a fine grey suit. “People tried to kill all the players.” He does not mean literally, but he wants to emphasize the point. “I will tell you something — in the Dominican, baseball is the most important thing. You know today, it’s the Pope? The Pope being chosen? It doesn’t matter in the Dominican.” He points at the field. “This game matters.”

And Italy’s first inning included a three-run homer from a 29-year-old career Independent ball player from Massachusetts, and a Brazilian-Japanese Italian League pitcher has thrown magnificent slow smoke for five and a third, and now Italy has gone to the pen. The Dominicans loaded the bases in the sixth, and Reyes was the most excited guy in the dugout, but an ambidextrous sidearm pitcher from Omaha got them out of it. All these adopted Italians are coming through, and the Dominicans need something. At this moment, Jose Reyes is not smiling.

“For me, I’m proud to play with someone like Reyes who’s always happy,” says Cano later. “Hey, this guy has too much inside him, let me get to the same level as he is, really get with people who have that excitement, that eagerness to play. He’s always on a high, laughing.”

In the clubhouse he’s always smiling, and it’s not fake, it’s not manufactured. That’s just an overflow of who he is. It’s fun. Not everybody is like that

So on the very next pitch Reyes punches a single right back through the box, and there’s that smile. He moves to second on a single from Erick Aybar; Cano bloops a ball into left that glints off the edge of Toronto-born shortstop Anthony Granato’s glove, and the bases are loaded again and Reyes is staring at home plate. His new Toronto teammate, Edwin Encarnacion, takes a pitch that might have been called a strike for ball four. Encarnacion raises his bat, then drops it, and Reyes walks home. He is so happy.

“There’s a few guys who have that good energy,” says Carlos Delgado, here coaching for Puerto Rico. “He does have a unique thing, though. He’s easy to sell. I mean, you watch him play and you say, this guy, the camera is always on him, so it seems like every reaction gets on TV. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and as a player who played with him, I would tell you that he’s not trying to show anybody up. He just loves the game, and he gets happy.”

In the dugout Reyes is reacting, and it is on TV. He leans over the railing, he turns, he smiles, he implores the scraps of crowd for more noise. He claps, he points, he hops in place, he pats a teammate with glee. Aybar comes home on a sacrifice fly, and Nelson Cruz hammers home the go-ahead run. The Dominicans celebrate runs like they are birthdays, and Reyes is often the first one out to celebrate.

“But he’s the fastest, so that doesn’t count,” says Delgado, who played with Reyes with the New York Mets from 2006-09. Still, even in this party, Reyes stands out. Delgado agrees. “Toronto’s going to love him,” he says.

“We would not lower our head,” says Reyes, his constellation of tattoos peeking out from below his sleeves to behind his ear. “Thank God I started training in November, because I knew the challenge that was coming. If you start early, training every day, you’ll be ready, and we are ready.”

“I can’t think of a better teammate that I’ve ever had,” says R.A. Dickey, the Jays ace who played with Reyes in New York. “I mean, he’s that good. In the clubhouse he’s always smiling, and it’s not fake, it’s not manufactured. That’s just an overflow of who he is. It’s fun. Not everybody is like that.”

On the final play of the game Reyes starts a double play that ends with Encarnacion, and he is chosen to talk to ESPN, and he calls it a huge win, a huge win. As soon as it’s over, Toronto’s new shortstop bounds away into the dugout. You’ve never seen someone smile like that. But you will.